09-07-2009, 12:58 PM | #1 |
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Epub books text justified with update?
I'm buying a Sony PRS-505 and would like to know if you guys think it will display correctly justified text in epub books after a firmware update by Sony.
Do you think such an update is possible and expectable in the near future? |
09-07-2009, 01:27 PM | #2 |
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I wouldn't hold your breath. I think if this mattered to them, they would have included it as a feature in the new 300s and 600s but don't appear to have done so. There have been rumors for a long time they were working on a firmware update, but I've stopped believing them personally.
Let's hope they prove me wrong. |
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09-07-2009, 04:30 PM | #3 |
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Second that!
But... everything is possible. |
09-09-2009, 04:35 PM | #4 |
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Well epub seems to be the dominant format and it is the one used by the official UK stores for the Reader... yet it looks awful on a reader, with wasted whitespace at the margins or too-small text and odd flowing, it is very poorly implemented and one wonders if anyone other than the guinea pig customers has ever bought an epub and read it on a Reader...
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09-09-2009, 05:13 PM | #5 |
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I think that when Sony starts selling epubs exclusively and if enough people complain about the lack of full justification they will come out with a update. The Sony 300 I bought come with a bunch of sample ePub books and I was not to impressed with them. Though the ePub books make it easier to go to the same book on the 300 and the 505 because of the little page numbers on the side. I just remember where I left off on one reader and go to that page on the other reader. Can't do that with LRF/LRX books.
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09-09-2009, 10:35 PM | #6 | |
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Quote:
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09-09-2009, 11:45 PM | #7 | |
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Quote:
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09-10-2009, 11:32 AM | #8 |
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Clamor clamor clamor!
I understand that people's preferences vary, but full justification is what most of us are used to (--open any paper book on your shelf--) and find ragged right offputting. |
09-10-2009, 11:38 AM | #9 |
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Hmm.. how about writing an open letter to Sony concerning this issue?
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09-10-2009, 11:43 AM | #10 |
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It shouldn't be that hard for them to give people the option to have it either way.
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09-10-2009, 04:49 PM | #11 |
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One of the reasons I bought the 505 last December was to test ePub.
But without full justification, the format is useless for me. |
09-10-2009, 05:03 PM | #12 |
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Personnally I don't like full justification. I just read a book that had two words on one line - one at the beginning and one at the end, with a big blank spot in the middle. I never liked pbook spacing either-too many extra spaces between words.
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09-10-2009, 06:45 PM | #13 |
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I would like full justification, but "useless" without it? I thought easily readable text was the idea! What I really call useless is the way some PDF's display on the Sony.
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09-10-2009, 10:33 PM | #14 | |
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Quote:
But otherwise, typographically well-made books will avoid stretching interword spacing by too much even with full justification by hyphenating words to fit nearly the same amount of characters on every line. That's really only possible with fairly advanced typographical programs like InDesign, Scribus or--the free alternative--LaTeX. It's not current possible with anything using ePub source. So in the meantime, my favorite book format is PDFs made to have the right size for the reader, which can be done with LaTeX. But those are rare. ePubs tend to come next, but I'd still prefer full justification. (PDFs not made to have the page size of the reader of course are much less readable, of course, and I'll usually process them with something like SoPDF or PDFLRF first.) |
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09-11-2009, 02:44 AM | #15 |
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Is there a way to process epubs to a pdf or so? If I convert them to LRF in Calibre the text size is usually all over the place with sudden pull quotes in large followed by the smallest text imaginable.
I'm not complaining about ragged right, I can live with it. I am moaning about huge margin sizes. On a recent epub purchase, the standard S was about 6pt. Way too small. With huge borders. So shifting up to M results in a readable font but even bigger borders, resulting in only 50% of the screen being used. That particular epub looks much better in landscape mode... BUT I just know if I had bought everything in LRF, everything would fill the screen and be the right size mostly... come on SONY, polish the ePub firmware for the 505! |
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